Guillermo Del Toro Will No Longer Direct Emma Watson in WB’s Live-Action ‘Beauty and the Beast’

This is unfortunate, but not too surprising: Deadline reports that Guillermo del Toro (Pacific Rim, Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy) will not direct Beauty, Warner Bros.’ live-action adaptation of Beauty and the Beast. Del Toro has been attached to this project for years – first as a producer, then as a director – but now it appears he’s too busy to commit fully to the project.

That doesn’t mean he won’t be involved, though. The outlet reports that he’ll still be on board as a producer and he actually wrote the screenplay too. The filmmaker has been one of the busiest guys in Hollywood for the past decade, with a seemingly constant rotation of at least five or six movies in development at any given point; I remember looking at his IMDb page a couple of years ago and he had sixteen different things in various stages of pre-, post-, or regular production. His FX series “The Strain” debuts next month, he’s currently editing his haunted house film Crimson Peak, and he probably has another dozen things in the works to keep him occupied. Like Spielberg, though, just because del Toro’s name is attached doesn’t automatically make a project good: look no further than the awful Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark remake he produced a couple of years ago for proof.

This project has nothing to do with Disney’s own live-action update of the story that will be directed by Bill Condon, but as you may have noticed, fairy tale movies are all the rage right now, so we’re guessing WB is going to try to find a director quickly so they can get a jump on Disney’s version. Emma Watson is still attached as the lead, and as awesome as it would have been to see what she could do under del Toro’s direction, that will have to be yet another one of those “what if” scenarios (like del Toro’s version of The Hobbit) that movie geeks dream about.

Ben is a writer living in Los Angeles, California. His work has been featured at ScreenRant.com, FirstShowing.net, MySpace.com, GeekTyrant.com, and many more sites across the web. Some of his favorite movies include The Rocketeer, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Tombstone, Lucky Number Slevin, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Collateral, Double Indemnity, Back to the Future and The Prestige. Follow him on Twitter: @BenPears.